moonbuggy

`A group of boys who posed as a 15-year-old girl for an Internet prank ended up helping police arrest a 48-year-old man who tried to meet the fictitious teenager for sex, authorities said.

The five boys had created a fake profile of a girl on MySpace.com — a social networking Web site — to cheer up a friend who had recently broken up with his girlfriend.

But soon, a man began sending messages to the “girl” and their conversations began to have sexual overtones, said Fontana police Sgt. William Megenney.’

(5meg Windows Media)

`Iran threatened America with “harm and pain” if sanctions were imposed as Tehran was finally referred to the UN Security Council for action over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.

A senior Iranian official warned: “The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll.”‘

`Providing the strongest evidence yet that human beings are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function. Providing the strongest evidence yet that human beings are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function. Providing the strongest evidence yet that human beings are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.’

`The United States CPSC has initiated criminal legal action against us and other chemical suppliers. In short, the CPSC would like to ban the public from all access to chemicals. This would mean an end to hobbies such as model rocketry, pyrotechnics and of course chemistry. One by one, our freedoms are slowly being taken away from us – this action must be stopped now.

Specifically, the CPSC is focusing on certain chemicals and metals at this time. [..]

This forbids or very severely limits sale of all common oxidizers and many common pyrotechnic fuels to anyone who does not hold a manufacturing license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). To require everyone who wants to work with common chemicals to hold a BATF “Explosives Manufacturing License”… even though they are not manufacturing explosives, is completely insane.’

`North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il may launch a sneak attack on the world’s pop charts – with the love-song I Am a Front-line Soldier’s Wife.

Kim Jong-Il’s latest attempt to consolidate power has been to authorise a swathe of new love songs to re-invigorate the population and entrench his control of one of the world’s last communist states, according to local reports. [..]

North Korean media outlets have previously labelled the North Korean leader as the world’s greatest golfer, reporting that he scored five holes-in -one and scored 38-under-par in his first game.’

`Intel has created a self-contained watercooling unit that will enable the latest Pentium Extreme Edition chips to hit 5GHz with ease.

The cooler has come out of Intel’s engineering department, which is staffed with a bunch of enthusiasts who have been trying to push the envelope at Intel to try and get the firm to move away from its ‘overclocking is bad, mmmkay’ stance.

The team, led by thermal mechanical engineer Gavin Stanley, spent an awful lot of time looking at current watercooling kits and systems on the market. They all shared several flaws, he told us: that they were complex to assemble, had a short life, consisted of too many different parts and used flimsy tubing.

The goal of his team, he laid out, was to come up with a more robust, reliable and efficient way of watercooling the processor.’

`Scientists in energy-poor Japan said Friday they have found a new source of gasoline — cattle dung.

Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, said his team has successfully extracted .042 ounces of gasoline from every 3.5 ounces of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.

“The new technology will be a boon for livestock breeders” to reduce the burden of disposing of large amounts of waste, Shibusawa said. About 551,155 tons of cattle dung are produced each year in Japan, he said.’

`When Cornell physicist Veit Elser attempted to demystify an esoteric imaging problem for biologists, he had no idea his solution would also help subway riders and break room loiterers around the world figure out those challenging, Sudoku puzzles.

While creating an algorithm that could render images of small and delicate biological specimens, Elser inadvertently found a universal solution for the popular Japanese brainteasers.’

`Take one part high-frequency gravitational wave generation, then add in a quantum vacuum field.

Now whip wildly via a gravitomagnetic force in a rotating superconductor while standing by for Alcubierre warp drive in higher dimensional space-time.

So you’re looking for the latest in faster-than-light interstellar travel via traversable wormholes? That’s one theme among many discussed at Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF), a meeting held here Feb. 12-16 that brought together more than 600 experts to thrash out a range of space exploration issues.’

`Conan O’Brien sends Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to visit New York’s Chinatown for Chinese New Year.’

`Vibrators frequently fail, especially with heavy use. But this doesn’t mean you have to give up and buy a new toy every time your vibe malfunctions. We took a few broken vibrators from our test lab and did some troubleshooting to show how you can fix your own sex toys at home with a few simple tools.’

With detailed instructions and pictures. You can’t go wrong.

`A painted image of the Hindu goddess Kali is propped up against a stone in the dirt, her long red tongue goading terrified worshippers into submission. From one of her eight flailing arms a severed head dangles, her neck is adorned by a necklace of bleached human skulls.

There are bloodstains on the cracked wall behind the terrible postcard-size image and, around the dark room, splattered gore on the heavy wooden furniture. These dark marks bear witness to a child sacrificed in the name of the abominable goddess.’

`A remarkable, if slightly creepy, tree-climbing robot is being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. [..]

The aim of RiSE (Robots in Scansorial Environments) is to develop a robot capable of walking on land and also crawling up vertical surfaces. And it is funded by DARPA’s Biodynotics Biologically Inspired Multifunctional Dynamic Robotics (BIODYNOTICS) Program.’

with link to video.

`Size: 63 ¾” H x 25 ½” W x 29 ½” D Solid ash wood with rich brown finish. Wrought iron candleholder, includes candle. Decorative porcelain ashtray. Hand-painted toilet bowl, seat handle, pull-lever, and plaque. Le Bon Roi Dagobert plays when lid is raised a song about a king who arrived at the ministers council with his trousers on backwards. Standard 1.6 gallons per flush. 12″ rough-in Manufacturer 1-Year limited warranty. Made in France. This item requires Sanitary Equipment listed in related items below. Ships in 1-3 business days.’

A philosophical quiz thingy.

I took three hits right at the end. Here’s what it tells me:

`You have been awarded the TPM service medal! This is our third highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity without suffering many hits and biting no bullets suggests that whilst there are inconsistencies in your beliefs about God, on the whole they are well thought-out.’

And there’s more Games and Interactive Activities from the same people.

`Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.

This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

They don’t know how they did it.’

`Coffee drinkers who have more than three cups a day could be dramatically increasing their risk of a heart attack, say researchers.

A study found people who were “slow metabolisers” were at greater risk because they could not process caffeine as quickly as others.

The research discovered that this type of coffee-drinker was up to 64 per cent more likely to suffer a cardiac arrest.’

Quick little puzzle. It’s a Rube Goldberg machine that needs some slight modification to work.

`Leroy Donald Johnson was caught this weekend in a barn with his pants down, literally, according to a sheriff’s office report.

“You caught me … I tried to (expletive) your sheep,” Johnson told his neighbor, according to the report.

But the Mesa Fire Department deputy fire chief changed his story when a sheriff’s deputy arrived on his doorstep minutes later, denying anything happened.’

`A woman is suing a big US pharmacy company for describing her as crazy and a “psycho” on paperwork that came with her prescription sleeping tablets.

Janey Karp, 53, who suffers from depression and anxiety, couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw “CrAzY!!” typed in a field reserved for patient information on a computer printout, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Elsewhere it said: “She’s really a psycho!!! Do not say her name too loud, never mention her meds by names & try to talk to her when … “‘

`We all know the SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) story — RGB electron guns firing at phosphors to produce image quality as good as or better than that of a high-end CRT but in a package the size of a flat-screen LCD or plasma display and all at one low, low power consumption. Throw in talk of million-to-one contrast ratios and you have the idea. But where are the SED products we’ve been promised by the pioneers, Canon and Toshiba, for so long?

We bet you guessed we were gonna answer that and you’re not wrong — the two companies just announced that they’re starting production in July 2007 and expect to see SED TVs on the market by the fourth quarter of the same year. [..]

`One of every five calories in the American diet is liquid. The nation’s single biggest “food” is soda, and nutrition experts have long demonized it.

Now they are escalating the fight.

In reports to be published in science journals this week, two groups of researchers hope to add evidence to the theory that soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks don’t just go hand-in-hand with obesity, but actually cause it. Not that these drinks are the only cause — genetics, exercise and other factors are involved — but that they are one cause, perhaps the leading cause.’

follow up to Soft drinks found to have high levels of cancer chemical.

`A man who claimed a chainsaw gang chopped off his legs did it himself, police said yesterday.

The unnamed van driver told them he was dragged from his vehicle by attackers who hacked at his legs with the saw before torching his Transit.

But police revealed they now believe he turned the saw on himself.’

`I had to sign a tedious business contract the other day. They wanted my corporation number — fair enough — plus my Social Security number — well, if you insist — and also my driver’s license number — hang on, what’s the deal with that?

Well, we e-mailed over a query and they e-mailed back that it was a requirement of the Patriot Act. So we asked where exactly in the Patriot Act could this particular requirement be found and, after a bit of a delay, we got an answer.

And on discovering that there was no mention of driver’s licenses in that particular subsection [..]

[..] A couple of weeks earlier, I went to the bank to deposit a U.S. dollar check drawn on a Canadian financial institution, and the clerk announced that for security reasons checks drawn on Canadian banks now had to be sent away for collection and I’d have access to the funds in a couple of weeks. This was, she explained, a requirement of — ta-da — the Patriot Act. And, amazingly, that turned out not to be anywhere in the act either.’

`The Orange County Sheriff’s Office just announced that it has arrested the woman who claimed she was raped by several men who work at Walt Disney World. They say the woman made up the story, and that the sex was consensual. [..]

On Feb. 26, police responded to a report of an alleged sexual battery involving multiple suspects.

Sunde told investigators that she was approached by five or six “French men” in her apartment complex at approximately 4 a.m., and said the men physically carried her to the Gables Commons Apartments, where she was held down and sexually battered by at least four men.’

`To this end, us, isoHunt.com and TorrentBox.com, are forming a coalition together with other P2P operators being sued and yet to be sued, and if possible with the help of the EFF, we will fight for the right for technological progress and the legality of the search engine itself. It is too early right now to say what we need for help from you, but if the MPAA will not back down, I’m sure we are going to need your help. And no, we will not go the way of LokiTorrent or Suprnova.

Anyways, nobody panic, and let the torrents flow. If you like to talk to us live and chat with other fellows in the community, come chat on IRC on #isoHunt on P2P-IRC (SSL enabled on port 7000, you need a client like mIRC ). We’ll update as we learn more.’

`If Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan has his way, a new town being built in Florida will be governed according to strict Roman Catholic principles, with no place to get an abortion, pornography or birth control.

The pizza magnate is bankrolling the project with at least $250 million and calls it “God’s will.”‘

`A man who broke into a high school, stole a schoolgirl’s swimsuit and then defecated in it as he pranced around wearing the garment has been arrested, police said.

Yasuhisa Matsushita, 25, a temporary employment agency worker from Fukuroi, Shizuoka Prefecture, was arrested for trespassing and willful destruction of property.

Matsushita admits to the allegations.

“I did it because it felt so good,” Matsushita told the police.’

`The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the companies that use perfluorooctanoic acid, an ingredient in Teflon, will cut the chemical’s use.

PFOA or its related chemicals, used in nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing and food packaging doesn’t break down in the environment and has been found in low levels in the blood of some 90 percent of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The EPA hasn’t established safe levels of PFOA exposure, but an independent panel recommended in February that the agency classify PFOA as a “likely” carcinogen, while the EPA develops a final risk assessment of the chemical.’

follow up to Teflon’s sticky situation.